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Gin & It

..new writing for drinkers and thinkers, barflies and winos, boozehounds, tipplers and geeks. National treasures of the food and drink world rub shoulders with industry pros, tellers of tales and hip young gin-slingers serving up words of wit and wisdom with a certain sense of the louche.

Essential reading for bacchanalian bon viveurs, judicious sippers, hell raisers, lounge lizards and lushes, the gouty, the gin-blossomed, those iced to the eyebrows and the eternally over-refreshed.

A tad pretensious, you say? Yes, it does have that over the top, no real substance kinda cling to it. But surprisingly, the stories told are nothing but honest and down to earth, they are filled with passion, and curiosity. And as a reader you will feel both passionate and curious too.

After my New York trip earlier in the year I fell head over bar stools for cocktails, proper cocktails that is (rich, intense in flavour and aroma, served up in icy cold coupes), but in the second issue of Gin & It, Conor Brady teaches me that a cocktail is indeed not a cocktail – not really. Something about the paradigm shift ice would make, and the following rise of the generic term. He also makes me face the fact I am so little eager to embrace, that the cocktail experienced its first golden days long before the 1930s speakeasy versions that I am so smitten with.

In vol. 2 of Gin & It we also get to follow Nick Baines on his virgin sake tour around a Tokyo train station, as well as dive into several other small stories based around the wonderful sips of life. And this might just be my favourite part of the magazine, in these boozy and foodie Instagram days, here – in stark contrast – it’s all about the words. They are the gin, the whiskey, the champagne – while the illustrations only serve to function as tonics, sours and oysters (at best).